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SPECIAL

버추버 인터렉티브_쿠로

2024.10.14

Try clicking each VTuber and their signs!

VTuber

Kuro Kurenai

At first I started off streaming as a face cam streamer, but one day I was really, really ill and I didn’t want to show my face on stream, so I looked into what I could do instead, and I decided to use a free model of a face rig, which is a really old VTubing program. Ever since then, I just stuck with that. And now I’ve kind of started doing more face cam again, but I enjoy doing both. I like doing whatever interests me the most, which is also why I decided to do face cam—because sometimes you get limited in what you can do as a VTuber. I wouldn’t be able to do the airport logs or cooking streams because normally those are limited to just showing hands. And I wanted to do some stuff a bit more involved, a bit more fun in my head, but I couldn’t do that unless I did face cam. Whatever I’m feeling at the time—which one matches best—I try to do, because some things are better as a VTuber while others are better as face cam. I’m currently doing face cam and VTubing together and it’s still very new for me. However, I would say everything that I have done has been extremely fun. My enjoyment level of content creating and streaming has pretty much doubled ever since I’ve been able to choose which side I want to do—either VTubing or face cam.

Cute anime boy & depressed British man

Kuro Kurenai

It’s easier to do things that I’d normally find embarrassing if I just do them as a VTuber, so sometimes I can seem a bit more confident—like doing karaoke. I would rather do that as a VTuber, because they’re not really seeing my face while I’m singing. It’s a little embarrassing for me, so I’d prefer to do that than do face cam, but then, something like a cooking stream, I’d rather do my face cam because they can see everything that’s going on. Also, I think for gameplay streams, I prefer to do VTubing, because it’s easier to watch a cute anime boy play a game for 12 hours than a depressed British man play a game for 12 hours. (laughs) In my opinion, as a VTuber, you can get away with being less entertaining. Generally, if you have a really nice-looking model and people can enjoy staring at it for hours, you don’t really have to be as entertaining as if you were doing face cam, so I choose whichever one fits the most with whatever style of content I’m doing.

Games

Kuro Kurenai

I think my favorite face cam I’ve done so far has been a really old game called Yoostar 2, which puts your face into the game, and it was really funny. That was a game I’d always wanted to play, but because it uses a camera, I couldn’t really use it as a VTuber. So the moment that I started doing face cam, I was like, Yes, I have to do this game! And that’s probably my most memorable one so far. The reason I like the game is just because it’s so in-depth. There’s a lot to the game. I see it in the same way as chess. I really enjoy chess as well because there’s always something to learn. You never really master it. There’s always more and more to learn about the game. But then, for something like Undertale, I like that for different reasons. It’s more like games that make me feel something and get ingrained in my brain forever. It has those types of stories where I wish I could forget everything so I could play it again without knowing anything. But I would never really choose these games to stream. I think streaming League of Legends, VALORANT, or Undertale isn’t as fun for me, because I like to keep the games I really enjoy separate from live streaming. Otherwise, it becomes a job.

VeXpo

Kuro Kurenai

Everyone I met was super nice. I was really scared to be going offline, because I’ve never really done that publicly. I’ve never been to a convention in person and announced that I’m going in person, so it was scary, but it ended up being the best time of my life. The staff and fans were amazing, and I didn’t have to be worried at all. Every fan I met had amazing stories to tell me, or gave me gifts. All they wanted was a quick conversation, and it was really fun. Oh, and this is something I haven’t told the public yet! During the expo, I did a joint panel with Domo. After the panel, a lot of the fans came up to the stage, because they wanted to take pictures with me or give me a gift or get an autograph. And one of the fans left Yum Yums, which is a Greggs pastry. They left the box for me, and I got it, and I said, “Oh, thank you.” I didn’t think anything of it! And after everything was done, I went back to my hotel and then I ate the Yum Yums and I was like, This is really nice! And then the next day, I looked at Domo’s Twitch stream, and I realized as he started talking: “I feel so bad, because a fan gave me these Yum Yums for Kuro to try. And then, after the signing, I couldn’t find them, and I couldn’t give it to them. I don’t know where they went.” And to this day, I haven’t told him that I actually already ate it.(laughs) So he was just like, “I feel like I’m such a bad person because I lost the fan’s gift,” but I still haven’t even told him that I ate it. I won’t tell him until the interview comes out so he can find out. (laughs)

Then vs. now

Kuro Kurenai

When I first started, I wanted to just do everything myself, not rely on anyone, and then as time progressed, I realized that doing everything on my own, it’s not very viable. You can’t really just do everything on your own, for the most part. So over time, I tried to ask more and more people to help me. And now I think, for the most part, my criteria for choosing content is, Is it long to play? Can I complete it in one stream? Will it be fun for people to watch? And, Will I have fun with it? I feel like, a long time ago, I never used to care about that last one, which led to me being burnt out with streaming, but nowadays I prioritize whether it’s fun for me more than anything else, because I’ve noticed that the more fun I find it, the more fun my viewers find it anyway.

Confidence

Kuro Kurenai

Being a VTuber, where you don’t have to have your face or your body seen, has been really good for training me over the years to be more confident in my speaking, because it’s like practicing in front of a mirror—no one’s really seeing you. You can just go all out however you feel. And I think being in the VTuber community, most people are also introverts, so it becomes a lot less isolating. You don’t really feel alone. You feel like a lot of people can relate to you and people won’t find you weird for speaking all the time or anything. I feel like, in the VTuber community, it’s a lot easier to get along as an introvert, so VTubing has definitely helped me grow over time as a person. And even though VTubing has helped, I’ve always been good at being confident when I need to. When I was younger, I used to be a dancer and also a theater kid, so I would perform on stages as a kid, but then, when I became a teenager, I stopped dancing and performing, because I got too scared over time. But after doing VTubing, I’ve done many concerts, the panel, and more. I feel like the confidence I used to have as a kid is back again. So it’s one of those things I once lost and now it’s come back.